This article interrogates the ethics of the author-reviewer-editor relationship in academic publishing. In the first part of the article, I draw on experiences as author, reviewer, and editor to question why so much learning about the publishing process seemingly occurs through trial and error rather than through mentorship. In the second part of the article I turn attention to matters of motive and trust in music education research, sharing examples of how other disciplines approach questions of research ethics. I conclude with modest suggestions for how our field might begin to have more frequent and transparent mentoring conversations on ethical issues in authorship, reviewership, and editorship.